Queen of Shades
by avocadomoon
Summary: "Oh jeez," Chloe said, "am I in the touchy-feely part of Hell?" [post s4]


The waiting room was cold in the way a lot of offices were cold - clammy, artificial air that blasted through the vents, probably cycled through some air filter that had needed replacing a few thousand months ago. Chloe couldn't stop shivering in her thin blouse - it hadn't been a problem until now, that she was dressed for a sunny Los Angeles day, but this room was different; this room was designed for banal discomfort. The receptionist was wearing a winter coat, zipped up to her chin, and red fingerless gloves. Next to her wrist on the small desk, an old CB radio cackled quietly, a man on the other end speaking through static in a language Chloe didn't speak. Periodically, the receptionist would pick up the radio receiver and reply, lifting the edge of her winter ski mask and holding the radio to her mouth.

Around her, other people waited too - all of them shivering and miserable looking, in various states of dishevelment. There were three women sitting huddled in the corner, the one in the middle holding something small wrapped in a baby blanket. Next to them sat a teenage boy who seemed to be, for some reason, in black and white - like he'd stepped right out of an old movie - holding a small rubber ball, frowning to himself, and occasionally throwing it up in the air and catching it again. Chloe was sitting next to a man with a large head wound that was still actively bleeding; every time he shifted in his seat, he bled on Chloe's shoulder. Her stomach squirmed, and she wanted to move, but he'd been very nice and polite, otherwise - had offered her a stick of gum from his pocket, and offered to move so she could see the window - and she didn't want to be rude.

She wasn't sure how long she'd been sitting there, although she also knew it didn't really matter. She'd been here for years but also just for minutes; months and days and weeks and no time at all, all at once. When she was alive, she thought certain things about the way time worked, things that she was quickly corrected about upon her death. Time was not a line. It was not any shape at all, in fact - it was just another way of looking at things.

"Right then," the receptionist said, after another exchange on the radio. She placed it back in its handle with a loud 'clank.' "Now serving number four quatturodecillion, one hundred twenty-three tredecillion, nine hundred eighty-five duodecillion, nine hundred eighty-three undecillion, fourteen decillion, two hundred nonillion, three hundred ninety-one octillion, four hundred thirty-two septillion, nine hundred eighty-four sextillion, eighty-nine quintillion, three hundred twenty-five quadrillion, ninety-eight trillion, nineteen billion, two hundred thirty-eight million, five hundred nine thousand, eight hundred thirty…" she squinted at her ancient computer screen, "...four."

The assembled in the waiting room scrambled for a moment, pulling their long strips of numbered paper out of whatever pockets they'd curled them into, muttering to themselves as they checked. Chloe didn't bother; she'd been the last one to sit down. Quite a while to wait still.

"Oi," said the boy suddenly, in a queer, vaguely European accent, "that's me, I think."

"Let's see it, then," the receptionist said, holding one red-tipped hand out over the desk. The boy pulled himself to his feet with some effort - who knows how long he'd been sitting there, the last man whose number had been called had been sitting for so long that one of the office plants had started to grow on top of him. He'd had to hack away a bunch of crawling vines in order to stand up. "Quickly, now. Our Lord is a busy woman."

Chloe watched with some sympathy as the boy limped on unused feet over to the desk, rolling out the strip of paper with clumsy hands. The receptionist peered at it for a moment, then up at the boy, who seemed to be doing his best to look demure and polite, although the red smear of corruption on his face made that somewhat of a futile effort.

"Very well," the receptionist said. Her words came out somewhat muffled through her ski mask. "You can go on in. Remember to speak clearly and in your native tongue; Our Lord Ashmedai doesn't tolerate falsehoods. Be direct and honest and don't forget to keep your chin up, there's a love." The receptionist reached out and chucked the boy's chin, which made him giggle. "Ask your question and you shall receive an answer. You've waited long enough for it and you deserve it."

The boy nodded, and said something in a language that sounded like Dutch to Chloe. Or maybe Old French - they sounded fairly similar to her.

"Good luck to ye." The receptionist raised a hand to shoo the boy off, and he laughed once - a bright, hysterical burst of sound, and ran past her desk to the door on the other side. It creaked loudly as he opened it, and for a brief moment, the waiting room was treated to the wind tunnel sounds of the corridors of Hell - no screaming, not like Chloe had ever pictured it when she was alive, a hodgepodge from movies and Dan's mother's Sunday School stories - but just wind. A sucking sound, like the slurp of someone trying to eat while missing all their teeth, like the whistle of a bullet through murky water, like the dying gasp of a perp as they bled out beneath her hands on a patch of dirty pavement. There was no walking through those corridors - you were only pulled along by the current, an invisible wind that directed you to where you were going and that was the end of it - no choice involved, no bodily autonomy whatsoever. Chloe had been in that part once or twice - that's how she ended up here. At this point, she had given herself over to trust - that wind hadn't steered her wrong yet. She was always right where she was trying to be - so it had to know more than she did. Right?

"I think I'm next," said the friendly, bleeding businessman. He leaned over to show her his own scroll of paper. "Am I reading this right, do you think? Does that say four quatturodecillion, one hundred twenty-three tredecillion, nine hundred eighty-five duodecillion, nine hundred eighty-three undecillion, fourteen decillion, two hundred nonillion, three hundred ninety-one octillion, four hundred thirty-two septillion, nine hundred eighty-four sextillion, eighty-nine quintillion, three hundred twenty-five quadrillion, ninety-eight trillion, nineteen billion, two hundred thirty-eight million, five hundred nine thousand, eight hundred thirty-five?"

Chloe squinted at the paper for a second. "I think it does," she said kindly.

"Oh good," the businessman said, sitting back in his seat with a happy little wiggle. At the desk, the receptionist was talking on the radio again in that garbled, ancient sounding language. "What are you going to ask Our Lord Ashmedai for?"

_Safe passage to the ninth circle so I can request an audience with the Lord of Hell,_ Chloe thought, but didn't say. "Not sure yet," she said. "I've got plenty of time to wait, don't I? This seemed like a nicer way to pass the time than in my loop."

"Too right, too right." The businessman crossed his arms. The blood that ran into his eyes, making his eyelashes clump together, didn't really seem to be bothering him much. He actually looked like he might be daydreaming a little. "I'm going to ask that she go back up top and pay my wife a visit."

"Oh, how nice," Chloe said. "You'd like to check up on her?"

"Oh yeah," the businessman said, with a dark chuckle. "That fucking bitch. Can't wait until she ends up down here, too. But I was hoping they'd send someone up early. I'm too impatient for my own good, I suppose."

Chloe blinked at him. "Ah," she said, and looked away.

"Would you like some more gum?" he asked, smiling pleasantly at her.

"Um, no thank you," Chloe said.

* * *

Chloe died in a fire. Which was fitting, she supposed. It'd been an accident. Not an accident in that the fire was an accident - that was entirely deliberate. But an accident in that she hadn't meant to die. She'd been thinking about it at the time, which was the ironic part. Like that ghost movie with Michael J. Fox - take a nap in a walk-in freezer, stop her own heart. Just pop down and say hi to Lucifer, check on him, make sure he was alright, then - zap, back to the land of the living. It was doable, right? He'd done it for her, she could do it for him.

But the fire got her before she could actually do it. She remembered feeling something about it, back when she first...woke up here. Worrying about Trixie, and Dan and Ella, Linda and Maze and Amenadiel and everyone else she'd left behind, but that had faded soon enough. Her loop was boring; a highlight reel of every shameful, guilty moment of her life. That one weekend when Trixie was eighteen months old, sick and colicky and Dan was out of town, when Chloe had dropped the baby off with her mom and gone to a spa because she was so fucking sick of baby vomit and dirty diapers that she felt like she might explode. There was one moment, sitting in her car as she was about to get ready to drive home, when Chloe had considered...just for a split second, just long enough for the thought to form in its entirety: leaving. Just driving off into the sunset and never looking back. That was the worst of her loop, but Chloe had forgiven herself for that years ago.

Other bad days - a standoff in the early days of her career when she was still working Vice, a working girl caught in the crossfire, and Chloe spent a long, sick weekend not knowing if it was her bullet or not that had killed her. (It wasn't.) Fights with her mother, when Chloe had let all her repressed nastiness fly. Or worse - fights with her dad, before he died. Or Dan, who had tried so _hard_ in the beginning, and only stopped giving a shit once he realized Chloe was never going to meet him halfway. Lucifer, staring at her with stricken eyes as she told him, "I don't know, I don't know," crying so hard she felt sick. Trixie staring up at her with wide eyes as she tried to explain why Daddy wasn't living with them anymore. Over and over, like a highlight reel of all the worst moments of her life, but Chloe had still somehow stood outside of it, watching it like a sad movie, but aware all along of what it was, where she was, what was happening. Maybe that's why it never worked on her - or maybe because of whatever it was they called her, a miracle. Maybe it was because she knew Lucifer, maybe his regard made her immune - she didn't know. All she knew was that she was bored.

She'd found a way out, eventually - there were _edges_ of the memories that she could feel, and with enough time, she learned how to push on them. She kept pushing and pushing - for lack of anything better to do - and eventually, she'd found a door. A door that opened up into that sucking wind tunnel - the veins of Hell - that had led her into one weird, strange room after another. She'd crashed what had looked like an office birthday party but for demons - the cake was made from rotting meat, and many of the demons were wearing peeled human faces stretched over their jaws like masks, but they'd been quite friendly to Chloe - given her directions, offered her a piece of meat-cake which she'd politely declined. After that room she'd found a lake made of fire, with a bunch of strange, bird-like creatures dipping in and out, munching on these round rocks they found that looked like coal, but smelled sweet, like burnt sugar. Chloe had tasted one, and it was sort of like cotton candy - the first food she'd eaten since she'd died. She could still taste it in the back of her mouth.

From there she'd walked, and walked and walked and walked, sometimes passing other souls that seemed to be doing the same thing she was - wandering without purpose, somewhat forlorn, confused but in a mild way, as if they'd gotten turned around in their dentist's office. Most of the rooms she found were empty - one made entirely of glass, where she'd taken a long nap and dreamed nice dreams. Another one with an empty tennis court, but it was upside down. Another that seemed totally empty, but for an impossibly loud, unyielding beeping noise that she knew would drive her insane like nothing else here could.

She kept walking. One soul she passed had reached out and gripped her arm, pulled her close and screeched, "redrum, redrum," and then when Chloe gaped at her, she laughed merrily and let her go. "I always make that joke," she yelled, over the sound of the wind, "to anyone who looks modern enough to get it." Then she gave Chloe a bottle of water - a nice gesture, even if it had been empty - and pointed her to Ashmedai's waiting room.

You could ask this demon, this Princess of Hell, for a favor, and word on the street was that she usually said yes. Unless you asked for something unreasonable, like to be brought back to life, or to be sent to the Silver City, but - everyone was rather practical down here. At least everyone Chloe had met. If she'd been expecting torture - grim chambers of blood and ash and distended organs, she hadn't found it. Oh, there was misery, to be sure - deep, profound misery, of the most helpless and unending kind - but whatever circle she was in now - some people said eighth, others said fourth - seemed to be reserved for those who knew they were damned and were somewhat resigned to it. One room she'd passed through had contained a woman who was torturing _herself_ \- pushing corkscrews under her own nails, carving words into her own flesh - and Chloe had stopped to chat for a bit, make some pleasant conversation while the lady idly broke her own fingers, over and over again, one by one by one.

That was the closest she'd seen to the Hell of her nightmares so far. She hadn't remembered her name - the lady - she'd been there for too long, she said. Stuck in her ways, she said. Used to the routine. _What did you do?_ Chloe had asked. _Why do you do this to yourself?_

"Suppose I deserve it, don't I?" Everyone in Hell seemed to be British. Chloe was keeping a careful watch on her own accent, but every time she spoke, she was still as American as ever. "Wouldn't be here otherwise. Don't remember what it was, but it was probably right awful. Feel guilty about _something,_ I do."

"But you could stop," Chloe offered. "You could do what I'm doing - go outside. Wander off somewhere."

"Oh, but how would I find my room again?" the lady asked, looking dismayed. She was naked, but Chloe didn't find that as off-putting as the way she was absentmindedly peeling the skin off of her abdomen from a knife wound she'd insisted Chloe give her - _just start me off, won't you love? It's hard for me to reach that spot with my arms broken like this, you see._ "I had a torturer once. Nice bloke, went by 'Carl,' though I don't think that was his real name. He left like that, and never came back - got lost, probably. I've no sense of direction at all - who knows where I'd end up!"

"So you kept doing it yourself?" Chloe asked, perplexed.

"Well, wouldn't want him to have extra work if he does come back," the lady replied. She didn't react at all to the pain - if she even felt any. "Wouldn't be polite of me, would it?"

Chloe left her to it.

When she thought about her family now - Trixie, mostly, was who she meant by that - she had an odd sense of detached sadness, but more than that she just felt relieved. Relieved...of life, somehow. The burden of life. She had a sense - although she didn't know where that sense came from - that her daughter was safe, and loved, and would be for the rest of her life, regardless of Chloe's absence. She had so many years with her little monkey - more years than a lot of mothers had. She taught her a lot of things, and helped her learn how to be strong. Trixie would be alright. She would grieve for Chloe, but grief made you stronger. This was the way of the world - parents died, and children grew up. It happened to Chloe, and somehow it felt fitting that it would happen to Trixie, too.

Who killed her? Chloe didn't remember. There had been a case...she remembered something about a foreign national, a diplomat's son or something. But nothing else. Mostly she just remembered the fire - she'd been awake long enough to get burned. Her hand had hurt terribly, and she couldn't breathe. That memory crowded out everything else.

And somewhere down here - in one of these rooms, on the other side of one of these corridors, was Lucifer. She would find him eventually - she didn't stop to think often about why he hadn't found her yet. Why he hadn't sensed her. Hell was a big place - impossibly big, she was starting to realize. Big enough to hold quatturodecillions of souls. Maybe he'd forgotten her. Maybe he'd moved on. Maybe he was back on Earth by now, just waking up in his penthouse, putting off calling her because he was nervous, or depressed, or he wanted to get a haircut and a spa treatment first. Maybe this was just one more missed connection, crossed wires that kept tripping them on their way towards each other. Maybe she'd have to wait a quatturodecillion years to see him again - sitting in that waiting room, with vines creeping up her ankles, her joints growing dusty. She'd sit there for eternity if that's what it took.

It was the least she could do, after all.

* * *

Our Lord Ashmedai looked exactly like Marilyn Monroe, which was somewhat disturbing. She even had on the white dress on from _The Seven Year Itch._

"Norma Jean and I got on so well, I guess this is sort of like an homage," Our Lord Ashmedai said. Her office was not what Chloe had expected - it looked more like a living room, with a small 50s-style TV tucked in the corner, playing an episode of Pop-Up Video from 2001, and long low couches with soft, knitted coverlets thrown over the back. Everything was in shades of light blue. "More tea?"

"Sure." Chloe held out her cup. "Was she...um, one of yours?"

"One of my minions you mean?" Our Lord Ashmedai laughed merrily. "No, no. She's up in the Silver City now. At a library of some kind, knowing her. No, we just got on well, that's all." She dropped a sugar cube into Chloe's tea cup, and then a cube of something bright red with spotted dots of black into her own cup. It made a hissing noise as it dissolved, and the steam rising from her cup was green. "I don't always look like this, you know. Wouldn't do to waste a good Marilyn on some poor, absinthe-addled painter from the seventeenth century, you know?"

Chloe sipped her tea and smiled. Her first drink in Hell: it tasted like Coca-Cola. She wondered if Our Lord Ashmedai knew what tea was supposed to taste like. "I am very Hollywood. I appreciate the effort."

"You're welcome." She sat down next to Chloe. She had on some kind complex garter beneath her dress, which Chloe could see through the transparent slip beneath the skirt. "Now. Why are you here?"

"I came to ask a favor, Our Lord Ashmedai." Chloe hadn't meant to call her 'Our Lord Ashmedai,' which she thought sounded kind of stupid, but it came out anyway. In the waiting room, on the last stretch of her long wait, she'd tried over and over to say just the last part out loud, without the 'Our Lord' part, but she couldn't do it. Our Lord Ashmedai's name was Our Lord Ashmedai, because Our Lord Ashmedai liked to be called Our Lord Ashmedai, and that was that on that. "Isn't that why everyone comes here?"

"I don't mean here in my office, I mean _here,_" Our Lord Ashmedai said. "Your soul shines, little one. Shiny like silver." She reached out and touched Chloe's face gently. "You don't belong here."

Chloe struggled for words, for a second. "I must," she finally said, "I'm here, aren't I? People don't accidentally slip down here when they don't deserve it. That can't be how it works."

"Oh, you'd be surprised," Our Lord Ashmedai said, her pretty face darkening just a bit. Or - Marilyn's face, as it was. "That's how this place came to be, little one. A few of us just...slipping downwards." She drank her tea. Whatever was in her cup was burning her lipstick off with each sip. "But that's a different story. Tell me - who loves you, little one? Who brought you down here?"

Chloe's mouth opened, and then shut again. She'd had lots and lots of time to think over her question - her favor - and how to phrase it, but she couldn't remember what she'd settled on, in that moment. How could she say it, so this demon would believe her? Nobody else had.

_I knew him,_ she said, to the birthday party demons, to the self-torturing lady, to the empty tennis court, to the strange birds with their cotton candy lumps of coal. None of them had believed her. Why should this one?

"Ah." Our Lord Ashmedai lowered her tea cup to its saucer with a definitive clink. "..._ah._"

"Ah what?"

"Ah," Our Lord Ashmedai said again. There were tears in her eyes. "Did you know - this is a punishment?"

"Hell is a punishment?" Chloe snorted. "I had no idea."

"No. _This_ is _my_ punishment," Our Lord Ashmedai said. She gestured to her little room. "Holding court here, answering favors from souls. He gave me this assignment years ago - millennia. Back when you humans were still living in castles." She frowned, a little pout of her mouth. "I helped them, you see. I helped them too much. I went up top and I visited them, I gave them advice, I helped them fall in love, I saved their children from sickness, and when he found out, he became so jealous he flew into a rage. He bade me to sit here, in this little corner with a cone on my head, and help everyone who came to ask me for something, because if I loved those little creepy-crawlies so much then that's all I was fit to do anymore." She shook her head. "He was always so jealous. So jealous of you, with your freedom, and your passion. That was why he Fell, you know. He wasn't jealous of Father's love for you - he was jealous of your love for each _other._"

Chloe felt like she couldn't breathe. Her tea cup trembled in her hand.

"We punish the damned here, but we also shelter them," Our Lord Ashmedai said. "Surely you've noticed, by now?"

Chloe thought of the three women in the waiting room, who had spent years sitting across from her, clutching their baby blanket and shivering. The souls she'd passed in the corridors, wandering around lost, but who had angrily pulled away, hiding their faces when Chloe tried to talk to them. The way the boy had laughed in the moment the door had opened to him.

"Oh jeez," she said, "am I in the touchy-feely part of Hell?"

Our Lord Ashmedai laughed. "They spend so much time on the PR, don't they?" she said. "I suppose I see the purpose. The Morningstar always was dramatic - it's in his nature, after all. The way Father made him. Heaven has its place, and so do we. The holy order." She sighed. "The most compassionate of angels. He was the only one who could truly rule this place."

"Is he still an angel?" Chloe asked, the words like ash on her tongue. "He told me he was Fallen. He was angry - like he'd been betrayed. I'd never seen him so upset - he could barely talk about it."

"Even the Fallen are still children of God, Chloe Decker," Our Lord Ashmedai said. She reached out and gently touched Chloe's wrist. "We all are, little one. Even the worst of us are still Loved. That's the whole _point._" She squeezed once, before letting go. "Ask me your question. Go on."

It occurred to Chloe, for the first time since she'd entered the room, that Our Lord Ashmedai was speaking in an American accent. The first one she'd heard in quite a long while. The kindness brought tears to her eyes. "I want to see him," she said, feeling them spill over, track wetness down her cheeks. "I want to make sure he's alright. If I have to leave after that - fine. If he sends me away, back to my loop, or - or somewhere else, then that's fine, too, I-I just - "

Our Lord Ashmedai placed her hand on Chloe's shoulder, rubbing a little as she gasped, trying to hold back sobs. "Take your time, darling."

"I lived my life," Chloe finally said, "I lived and then I died, and that's what happened. It's over - I had my shot. But him and me - we were unfinished. He needed me, and I never came through - not really. Never believed in him the way he believed in me. I just want a chance to fix it - to say what I should've said when we were up there. Is that too much to ask?"

"No," Our Lord Ashmedai said gently. "Not at all."

Chloe sat there for long moments, crying into her tea. The Princess of Hell started humming along to the TV as she rubbed Chloe's shoulder - a Lisa Loeb song, Chloe realized. The music video for _Stay_ was on the television, crackling gently through old tube speakers.

"You wanna know a secret? He probably didn't tell you this," she finally said, as Chloe's tears finally subsided. "We were all _too_ compassionate. That's why it happened like it did. The ones leftover up there - they were the real bastards. The smite-y, rain of fire types." She shook her head. "Back in those days, it didn't take much. The wrong question at the wrong time. Father was young then, too." She took Chloe's tea from her hands, and set it down on the table. "But life's a journey, is what I say! Or afterlife, perhaps. Eternal unlife, as it is for us. Well, it's semantics." She touched the tip of Chloe's nose with one fingertip. "Would you like a train ticket? Just so happens I've got a spare. First class, too."

"There's - there's a train? To Lucifer?"

"There's a train, yes. Not to him specifically, but it'll take you much closer to him than you are now," Our Lord Ashmedai said. "You're a smart one. You'll be fine, I'm sure." She eyed Chloe speculatively. "You're too big for this place, too. Just like us."

Chloe didn't even know what to say to that. "Thank you," she settled on. "Thank you so much. I won't forget this."

"I know." She grinned. "One more cuppa, before you leave? I haven't had good company in _so_ long." Her eyes went distant. "Besides, the next bloke after you is going to ask for a sex doll. The longer I can put that off the better." She shivered delicately.

"Another cup would be nice," Chloe said honestly. She reached out and squeezed Our Lord Ashmedai's wrist, like she'd done for her moments before. She had plenty of time, after all.

* * *

One thing Chloe remembered was packing up his penthouse.

She and Maze had done it together, in stony silence. Carefully folded his towels and blankets, packed away his beautiful closet, draped silk sheets over the furniture, pulled the blinds shut. Lucifer had left a coffee cup on the nightstand, half-full, which had congealed into goo in the weeks he'd been gone. Chloe had washed it by hand, her eyes dry and painful, scrubbing until it was sparkling clean again. Maze watched her do it - smoking a cigarette by the window, her face crowded with things that she didn't really need to say.

"I still wish you'd keep the club open," Chloe said, as they descended the stairs mournfully. Shutting the door on the penthouse felt too final - like they were shutting the door on _him._ "When he gets back - "

Maze scoffed, so dismissively that Chloe couldn't finish her sentence, oddly hurt even though she knew it wasn't her that Maze was really angry with.

"Well, I'm just saying."

"Shut up, Decker," Maze spat, and pushed past her angrily.

Chloe waited her out. She followed her out onto the empty dance floor, watching quietly as Maze made a beeline for the bar. She'd stopped ordering supplies weeks ago, of course, but the club's inventory of alcohol was massive. Maze seemed to be doing her best to make use of it all on her own.

Watching her pound back drinks like she was the only one going through it made her angry, though. "You could've followed him," she finally said, resting one boot against the railing of Maze's chair. Maze stilled, like an animal in a gun scope. "You could've gone down too, so he wouldn't be alone."

"If I go, I can't come back," Maze said.

"So?"

"So?" Maze snarled at her. "It's your fault I'm like this now, you know. All of you. You rotted my heart with all your stupid human things, your slumber parties and your family dinners and your Halloween candy." Maze scoffed. "I was fine. I was _perfectly fine_ before. Made in his image, just how he intended. A perfect creation. I was a blade," she said proudly, holding her whiskey up to the light. "A sharp instrument, suited to my purpose. Creatures like me weren't meant to change. But he asked me to follow, and I did, and now here I am. Ruined. Soft and soggy, like moldy bread." Maze knocked back her drink. "It's your fault."

Chloe's chest felt hollow. "You're blaming me for...what? For being _human?_"

"It's not what I was meant for!" Maze snapped. "It's not why I was created."

"Oh, right. Because you're a big scary demon, torture torture, scary bad ass, blah blah _blahh_," Chloe said, rolling her eyes. "You're a coward, is what you are."

Maze slammed the glass down on the bartop so hard it shattered. "Say that again," she threatened.

Chloe wasn't scared. "Anger is the simplest emotion because it's also the easiest," she said, not backing down. "You get mad because it's easier than sadness. Than grief. Than regret. You're afraid of what you feel, so you just get angry."

Maze glared at her venomously, and for a moment Chloe's hand twitched towards a holster she wasn't wearing, a gun she didn't have. But she knew Maze, knew her better than any other friend she'd ever had, and for all the betrayals and disappointments, she trusted her more than any other human alive. Any other human, period. "I can't go back," she finally said. "He would never forgive me. I'm his right hand, Decker." Her face softens. "He'd want me here. With you and the other children."

Chloe's throat was so tight she almost couldn't speak. "I'm not a child," she said.

"Yes you are. You all are." Maze laughed. "You have no idea."

Chloe really didn't. The truth of that hit her, for maybe the first time. How long had they lived, really? All that they'd seen. She'd been so caught on the idea of what she thought Lucifer was - his _face,_ his red skin, his dark-black eyes, everything that she thought meant _evil, vengeance, the dark pit of despair that awaited every scumbag she'd dedicated her life to chasing - _but that wasn't all of it, was it? Lucifer had hung the stars in the sky. He'd loved the first human woman, walked the Earth a million times, rearranged the cosmos, broke up with God Himself and gave Him the finger on his way downstairs. How could she ever know? How could she ever, _ever_ compare?

"If I am, then so are you," Chloe said, and burst into tears.

Maze cursed, rolled her eyes, and then hugged her. They stayed like that for a long, long time - until the sky outside was dark, and the empty club felt hollow. Then they got blasted and passed out on the floor.

It'd been one of the better days after Lucifer left, all things considered.

* * *

The train ride was long, but after the waiting room, nothing truly felt _long,_ anymore. Chloe sat next to a girl she vaguely recognized - perhaps a film star, she did seem to attract the Hollywood types down here - but probably she just looked familiar. A lot of souls did.

They shared a cheese platter served to them by a demon wearing a comical train conductor costume which barely stretched over its scales, and the girl introduced herself as Shady. Chloe told her that her name was Charlie, though she couldn't remember why she said that, and why it made her kind of sad. Shady let her have all the olives, though, which helped a little.

"Got a favor from a soul I met down at the baseball field," Shady said. "Were you there too? Maybe that's how we met."

"I didn't know there was a baseball field," Chloe said.

"Oh yeah! I was there for ages," Shady said. She was wearing some kind of kimono, which gaped open to reveal a nasty chest wound every time she leaned over to refill her wine glass. "Sometimes you were the bat, sometimes you were the ball. Personally, I prefer the balls." She waggled her eyebrows.

Chloe pressed her lips closed against a smile. "Sounds fun."

"Sometimes!" Shady smiled. "How'd you get a ticket?"

"Our Lord Ashmedai."

"Oh, wicked! I heard she's nice."

"She is," Chloe said honestly, sipping her wine. Another meal, another drink in Hell. She couldn't stop thinking about Persephone - although a block of cheddar on top of a salty Club cracker didn't exactly carry the same class and style as a pomegranate. "Can I ask you a question? You seem like you've got your wits about you." She tapped her temple. "More than anyone else I've met anyway."

"Ohmigod, _thank_ you," Shady said, touched.

"What'd you do to get sent here? When you were alive, I mean." Chloe gripped her glass apprehensively, watching Shady's face cautiously for anger. "Everyone else I've asked doesn't remember."

Shady's face froze, for just a second, before she snapped back into motion again. Like a record skip. "I killed my husband," she said.

Chloe swallowed. "Oh," she said.

"He used to rape me. All the time." Shady didn't sound all that upset, or even concerned. "I felt terrible about it. That's why I killed myself later. But I waited until my son was old enough to get by, so maybe that's why they let me out of the loop."

"They _let_ you?"

"One day, a door popped up, and I opened it up and went through." She shrugged. "Wandered around for awhile. Met some folks. Then I found the baseball field and that was quite a lot of fun, so I stayed there for a long time. And now I'm here." She grinned, and popped a hunk of brie into her mouth. "I'm glad I met you, Charlie. You seem like a swell person."

"Thank you," Chloe said, still thinking about that sentence: _he used to rape me. All the time._ "Did you get away with it? Up top, I mean. Did they ever catch you?"

"Nope," Shady said. "My daddy helped me. He worked for the Sheriff's office. Hey, I wonder if he's here, too," she said, trailing off curiously.

"But don't you think you deserve better?" Chloe pushed, sort of angry and not really knowing why. "You were just defending yourself. He was hurting you, and you wanted him to stop - "

"Deserve better than what?" Shady asked.

"Well - here," Chloe said. "Shady...do you know where you are?"

"We're on a _train,_ silly," Shady said, and giggled. She touched Chloe's nose, much like Our Lord Ashmedai had done. "Are you alright? You want some more wine? You look kinda sad, doll."

"Did they torture you though?" Chloe pushed. She grabbed Shady's wrist. "That loop you were in...it was supposed to _torment_ you - don't you wish - "

"Here," Shady interrupted, pushing her own wine glass into Chloe's hand. "Drink up, Charlie. Take a breath."

Chloe blinked, and followed directions. The wine was red, something that was also vaguely familiar, a vintage she'd tasted before, on this plane or a different one - she wasn't sure.

"Where do you think we're going?" Shady babbled, while Chloe was still drinking. She craned her neck to look out the window. There was a poster of a winery taped to the outside of the glass - a touristy-looking photograph of a grassy hillside, rows and rows of grape plants beneath a warm-looking sun. The poster itself had seen better days, of course. "Wow. Who knew this place was so beautiful. What a view!"

Chloe side-eyed her a little. "Hell does sort of remind me a bit of France," she admitted.

Shady frowned, confused. "What's France?"

"Never mind," said Chloe.

* * *

She and Shady stuck together for awhile. They slept right there in their seats, and feasted on cheese platters every morning. Their demon server was named Leonard, and he only spoke Khwarazmian, an extinct East Iranian language which had been an offshoot of Aramaic, originating in the area that was now modern-day Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan.

Chloe knew this because after they kept badgering him to talk, he pulled a small card out of the ripped conductor jacket, held around his massive, red shoulders by safety pins, and handed it to them. It read: _**Hello. My name is Leonard and I only speak Khwarazmian, an extinct East Iranian language. It was an offshoot of Aramaic originating in the modern-day areas of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. If you want more cheese, please ring the bell.**_

"How helpful!" Shady said. Leonard nodded, his horn catching slightly on the ceiling, and gave them another bucket of wine.

They were the only ones in their car, although they could hear other souls in their neighboring compartments. They couldn't get through the doors though, no matter how hard they pulled, and since a lot of what they heard was screaming, they decided to stay put right there with Leonard. They played card games with a deck that Chloe found in her pocket - another gift from Our Lord Ashmedai, she suspected, since it was a novelty deck with pictures of Wham! on the back - and chatted about philosophy. Or rather - Chloe chatted about philosophy, while Shady nodded and "hmm"ed and pretended she cared.

"I don't understand a system that sends someone like you to Hell, I just don't," Chloe said. "What kind of God decides how much vengeance is too much? I mean, _Eve_ went to Heaven, for Christ's sake, and she's the reason sin existed in the first place!"

"Uh huh," Shady said. "Who's Eve?"

"She's…_Eve_," Chloe said. "Kind of an adrenaline junkie. A sweetheart deep down, though. Great legs." Chloe sighed wistfully. "She and Maze were on vacation in Italy."

"Who's Maze?" Shady asked cheerfully.

"My best friend."

"Oh, that's nice." Shady gulped some more wine. "I had one of those. She was a cat, though. My little Dottie." Her face went distant. "I miss Dottie more than I miss Albie. Maybe that's why I wasn't Forgiven or Loved, or whatever it is you said earlier about God."

"Was Albie your son?" Chloe asked gently.

"Yep. He became a lawyer," Shady said brightly.

"Trixie's a state senator," Chloe said proudly. Then she frowned.

"Oh wow! Who's Trixie?"

_How did she know that? Where did that come from?_ "My daughter," Chloe said, still frowning.

"Wow!" Shady said again.

"She was fourteen when I died," Chloe said. "She was...she was fourteen."

"My Albie was thirty," Shady said. "Married and everything. A real nice gal from Wisconsin. My daddy might be down here somewhere, but those two are definitely upstairs." She sighed wistfully. "Good for them."

Chloe drank deeply from her wineglass, discomfited. She was fourteen, she reminded herself. Just starting high school. Chloe had stayed up late the night before her first day, worrying herself into tears. She was taking biology and advanced math and Linda was going to pick her up so Chloe could sleep overnight in San Francisco for...a case? There was a case, and -

_She's the state senator for Los Angeles county, she lives in Eve and Maze's house, she studied political science and law in school, she's happy,_Chloe thought. Each one that came to her was stranger and stranger, things she knew to be true but couldn't remember learning. _She thinks about you every day but she's not as sad anymore, she tries to honor your legacy but she hasn't let it ruin her life. She's happy, she's so happy. She's proud of you. She prays to you and Lucifer every day, and sometimes she gets an answer._

"Oh God," Chloe said.

"Hey, you okay, Charlie?" Shady said.

Chloe turned and peered out the window, trying to see past the winery poster that was covering the view. There was only a little sliver of space, but whatever was outside the train was bathed in light. It broke through the little crack in the paper, lighting up a sliver of the armrest. "Shady, I think we're getting close."

"Close to where?"

"To wherever it is we're going," Chloe said. She whirled around. "Shady - what was your real name? Do you remember?"

Shady frowned. "Real name?"

"Never mind," Chloe said, huffing in frustration. She grabbed Shady's hand. "Just stick close to me, alright? Don't be scared. No matter what or who you see, okay? When you're with me, you'll be safe."

"Thanks, doll," Shady said, as if Chloe had just offered her the last cracker or something. "Hey, should we ring the bell for Leonard again? Maybe he'll bring us one more before we stop - "

The train stopped with a lurch, causing them both to tumble forward out of their seats. Shady broke into a joyous laugh, crumpled in a ball against the front compartment.

"Wow!" she said. "That was something!"

Chloe didn't reply, scrambling to her knees, a feeling deep in her chest that felt like a long-dead instinct, flaring back to life. Something was happening. Something was close.

"Do you think they'll open up the doors? Or - oh, wow," Shady said, shielding her eyes from the bright light that was flooding the compartment, growing stronger and stronger until Chloe had to slam her eyes shut, afraid she'd go blind. "Can a girl get a pair of sunglasses?!"

_I saw Satan fall, like lightning from heaven,_ Chloe thought, keeping her eyes squeezed shut. She was afraid to hope, but she hoped anyway. _I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you._

The light was very bright now; behind them, in the dining area, Leonard was yelling something in Khwarazmian, pounding his horns irritably against the ceiling. Next to her, Shady was still laughing.

"Is this Heaven?" she was calling at Chloe, still giggling. "It feels like Heaven. Is it Heaven?"

"No," Chloe said, her eyes still closed. For the first time since her death, she felt warm. "His name is Lucifer."

* * *

.

* * *

Lucifer was depressed. All the demons told him so.

"Perhaps, my Lord, if you took a shower," said Andhaka, who had always been a bit of an arse-kisser, but in a nice way, for the most part. "Or brushed your hair maybe? Not that you don't hold terrible beauty that outshines even God's most perfect mortal creations, praise be to Our Lord of Darkness, but that hair gel you're wearing is a few decades old, and it's starting to get crusty - "

"Silence," Lucifer snapped, then patted his hair self-consciously. "I shower on my own time, Disgusting One."

"Yes, of course, My Lord," Andhaka said. He eyed the edge of Lucifer's throne, then over at Maze's empty one, still smelling vaguely of stale blood. Lucifer's heart twinged. His twisted little Maze. He couldn't bear to put away her blades, even the ones that were still dirty. It'd be like giving up on her. "Maybe a light jog? Or some badminton? Some of your old friends are putting together a game up in the third circle, there was some talk of ice skating on the Frozen Wheel of Betrayal, losers have to conjure the hot cocoa - "

Lucifer sighed. "I hate badminton," he said. "Such a pointless sport."

"They've been asking about you though, My Lord."

"Bloody Lord Byron," Lucifer complained, rolling his eyes. "Poets! So needy. He just wants me there to make Peaches jealous, anyway."

"Oh, that's not true, My Lord," Andhaka said. "He talked about you quite a lot while you were away. Wrote loads of sonnets about you."

Lucifer scoffed, resting his chin on one hand morosely.

"Shall we go over the daily reports then?" Andhaka said, clearly seeing he was getting nowhere. "The rebellion in the East ninth is taken care of, you can thank Ukobach for that. Paimon has submitted a formal complaint about the recent uptick in mortals summoning him - seems his ritual was featured in some sort of horror movie, and you know that one Sumerian holy scroll is still floating around on the internet, the writer might've unfortunately - "

"_Fucking_ Ari Aster," Lucifer said.

" - and Ashmedai has sent a train, it seems." Lucifer froze, his chin still cupped in one hand. "Eighteen hundred souls aboard. Her latest load of asylum-seekers." Andhaka raised his eyebrows, which was an impressive display, considering he had three faces. Watching all six jump up at once was rather disconcerting. "Our usual batch of ones that qualify for purgatory, but the first class car is - "

"Give me that," Lucifer spat, ripping the scroll out of his hands. Around him, the throne room suddenly became encased in ice, reacting to its Master's emotions, and Andhaka started to back away slowly, all eight hands held up in careful supplication. "What is this?" Lucifer snarled. "A joke?"

"Demons don't have a sense of humor, my Lord," Andhaka said, which was a bald-faced lie.

"A soul touched by Divine?" Lucifer read incredulously. He laughed bitterly. "A Divine soul in Hell. Yeah fucking right."

"Stranger things have happened," Andhaka said nervously. "Listen, my Lord, I'm going to go check on the lower levels, I think I sense some happiness down there and that just won't do - "

"Oh, I have to see this," Lucifer muttered, not paying much attention. "Bloody rich, isn't it? You're all having a laugh, I bet. 'Let's send a martyred saint down to old Luci, see how he reacts!' Just have to keep _poking_ and _poking_ and _poking_ \- " The walls pulsed, the ice cracking and falling to the ground in dangerously sharp shards with each syllable.

"All hail our Lord of Darkness, I'll check on you in a few hours, shall I?" Andhaka said, and fled. A wave of ice fell, burying the door after his exit. Lucifer glared at it, and it instantly melted into a steaming puddle.

"_Very_ fucking funny, Dad," he muttered, shoving the scroll into one of his extra-dimensional pockets - the one thing he'd missed on Earth, really. The extra dimensions. They did come in handy. "You're a real _riot._"

Above his head, the last of the ice fell in a shattering crash, knocking one of Maze's blades off its perch. It landed sharp side down, in a perfect right angle between Lucifer's feet.

_Temper, temper,_ it may as well have said. Lucifer huffed.

"I really should go see Sigmund again, shouldn't I?" he asked, to nobody. When nobody, of course, answered, his anger evaporated and his shoulders slumped.

Yes, he was _very_ depressed.

* * *

Time in Hell was a funny thing. Is, was, and will be funny: you can go in circles for millennia, rounds of rebellions and torture-creating and paperwork and soul-evaluating and then peek your nose up and discover that only weeks have passed since your last vacation, and that charming cottage you rented still has your leftover lamb curry in the cooler. Once, Lucifer spent four whole weeks in a nice little village in France, and then popped back down for a meeting, and when he came back it was a hundred years later and everyone was dying of Plague. Dreadfully embarrassing - he hadn't meant for it to spread _that_ far.

You could go forwards and backwards without meaning it, sideways and leanways. Whichever way time wanted to go, in Hell - it could do it. Much like souls, which had a lot more power than anyone thought - even the souls themselves - there was no true _ruling,_ really. What Lucifer did was more of a light suggesting, with plenty of fireworks and dramatics to get his point across. Most decades he felt like a general manager of a department store or something. Stomping his feet around and desperately hoping everyone showed up for their shift on time.

Most of the time, he didn't even really need to do anything. His presence alone was enough to keep everyone behaved - everyone remembered the Ice Age. Lucifer had been going through something at the time - it'd been an _accident._ Not that anyone believed him.

Dr. Linda had asked him that once - what had stopped him before. "You've felt like that for a long time, as I understand," she'd said, leaning her elbows on her knees like she did when she was about to say something particularly devastating, "resentful of your job, a longing for change, missing Earth - then why didn't you do this earlier? Why did you only take short trips?"

A billion words rose to his throat, none of them in any coherent order. Lucifer struggled, sometimes - it wasn't always that he didn't _want_ to share his feelings, as Linda and the Detective often thought - it was often that he didn't know how. In Enochian, one could flap one's wings and express a breathtaking amount of information - everything from _how'd the smiting go this morning, mate?_ to _I'm having existential doubt in our Lord and God Creator and I need someone to hold my hand while I sob quietly and question the meaning of Divinity and why we were Created._ In English, words sometimes just felt a bit…_lacking._

How could he explain it? Sometimes he couldn't. But he did give it the old college try, and sometimes that's all Dr. Linda wanted. She seemed to have a keen sense of what he was trying to say, even if Lucifer couldn't actually say it, and she had no hope of understanding it anyway.

That was the other funny thing about time - in Hell and Heaven and all the planes in between, it meant that what happened eons ago actually only happened yesterday. Earth was the only place that insisted on making it plod along in a straight line - and even then there was a few wonky bits that never did get straightened out in the beginning. Lucifer Fell from heaven long before the Earth was created - but he also only Fell just a few days ago. His scars had long healed over, but at the same time - they were fresh. Today, yesterday, tomorrow - they were all the same thing. It was really rather annoying.

"Hard to move on, or heal, isn't it, when you run in circles like we do down here," Lucifer said, to one of his favorite demons - a nasty little sprite whose mouth had been sewn shut thousands of years ago. Mostly he hopped around the outer chambers, stepping on people's feet. He was a wonderful listener. "D'you reckon that's why I only started to grow as a person once I was on Earth for an extended period of time? Or maybe that was the therapy. Hard to tell."

The sprite said nothing, but he did step on Lucifer's foot.

"Very kind of you, old friend," Lucifer said, shaking him loose. The sprite instantly scrambled up the wall, its dozens of eyes blinking open and shut in rapid succession. "Always knew you'd be there to lend an ear, mate."

It wasn't nearly as nice as talking to Linda, but it _was_ much better than resorting to Sigmund. Lucifer had to take what he could get, these days.

* * *

So, Ashmedai had sent him a martyr. Lucifer pondered this as he watched the train's journey, plowing through the corridors of Hell haphazardly, knocking over hundreds of loop-rooms and other various structures and artifices as it went. The screams of some of the unlucky damned too slow to get out of its way was a nice soundtrack, although Lucifer could only hear them faintly through the little mirror he used to keep an eye on things.

Like the evil stepmother in Cinderella, he thought. He'd come up with this after remembering the movie, which he'd watched once with Beatrice Decker-Espinoza. (Lucifer could often be sentimental, although he would always deny it.)

Souls went to Hell when they felt like they deserved it, that much was true. However, somebody _did_ actually have to do _something_ bad in order to make it through. Even the most guilty of souls still ended up floating around in Silver City if whatever they felt guilty about was silly and stupid. Not calling their mothers enough, or jaywalking every morning to work. Hell was a busy place, after all; it didn't have time for trivialities.

So there were two possibilities. One: that a martyr had done something truly selfless enough to get themselves touched by Divine, but the rest of their life was so shit that they were sent to Lucifer to deal with (Heaven was well-known for fobbing its complex cases downstairs. Michael was _much_ too busy to waste time on moral complexities, the sodding prick.) And two: that it was a mix up, or a mistake, or a mean-spirited prank. Either option, Lucifer was already annoyed.

He'd met hundreds of martyrs in his long, maze-like existence, of course: plenty of them were sent to Hell at first, since most of them died in wars, which of course meant that they'd killed people and enjoyed it. (Everyone who was good at war enjoyed it, just a little.) Joan was his favorite. A real spitfire, that one. Tried to stab him in the heart, with some sort of righteous cry about slaying the Father of Evil (_hardly_) even when he was in the _middle of his speech,_ trying to tell her he was sending her to Heaven. Being _merciful_, and she tried to stab him! That was an interesting day.

He remembered another bloke from Detroit, who gave Lucifer a great recipe for chicken noodle soup before Lucifer sent him on up the stairs. A young girl, only five or six when she died, who followed him around the throne room with big, curious eyes, oblivious and completely impervious to his angry disgust. (He'd sent _her_ directly to Raziel. She always did have a soft spot for the young ones.) An elderly woman who'd thrown herself on a bomb to save some orphans, who cried out in French when he appeared (having forgotten to take human form) and tried to clobber him with her cane.

Still, he hadn't seen one in a long time. Martyrs were still fairly common, but somebody upstairs had to have worked something out. The timing was suspicious. He was probably the talk of the golden streets. Luci and his pathetic little crush.

Dark thoughts, indeed. Lucifer had been stern with himself: no peeking. It would only make this harder, and he'd been very disciplined thus far. (No promises after a century or so, however.)

"'Method of death: running into a burning building to save a young child who later grew up to be a heart surgeon,'" Lucifer read from the scroll. The sprite was still blinking at him from the ceiling, Maze's empty throne sitting there reproachfully. "'Sins committed: gluttony, violence, vengeance, sexual deviance, and a shamefully intense crush on James Franco.' Oh my, I like this one already."

Lucifer snapped his fingers, and the train ground to a halt, right in the middle of a particularly vengeful loop for a pedophile who'd shown no real remorse in the nearly four hundred years he'd been there. One of the train wheels was parked directly on his head, which made for an entertaining sight.

"Well," Lucifer said, "let's get the meet and greet over with, shall we? You can come too, if you want." The sprite scrambled down to Lucifer's shoulder, and with another snap of his fingers, became a sun conure parrot. Squawking a little, it shuffled its legs in annoyance, lifting up its new brightly colored feathers in distaste.

"Don't give me that look, at least you have a mouth again," Lucifer said. "Wouldn't do to scare the poor girl away, would it? She's one of the nice ones, remember."

The parrot squawked again, but settled companionably enough onto his shoulder. He really should give the poor old chap a name one of these days, Lucifer figured.

Andhaka had been right; he really could use a light jog. His joints creaked a bit as he stood from his throne, which was an impressive thing considering his joints weren't actually real. Lucifer went in for the whole thing, just to prove that he could - the burning light of Creation, the announcement, like they used to do in the old days - _**IT IS I, LUCIFER ATTAR THE MORNINGSTAR, BRINGER OF LIGHT AND HERALDER OF THE DAWN,**_ yadda yadda yadda. Lucifer sometimes missed the pomp and circumstance of Biblical times (another thing he'd never admit out loud).

To say the least, the reaction wasn't what he'd been expecting this time.

"Attar?!" A loud knocking, from the other side of the first class car. "Is that your middle name?"

Lucifer extinguished the light of Creation with a small gasp. It couldn't be.

"Hellooo?" Another pounding. "Who turned out the lights?"

"_Detective?_" WIth all the effort of a thought, Lucifer came into existence inside the train, and then instantly fell to his knees. Chloe Decker was there, standing with her hands on her hips, squinting. Lucifer gasped for air he didn't need, clutched at a chest he didn't really have. "Detective. _Detective,_ what are you - how did you - "

"Hi," Chloe said, a little sheepishly. She blinked, looking nervous and a little unsure and years older than she was when he'd last seen her, blinking at him in wordless anguish as he'd left her behind once and for all. "Uh. Surprise?"

Lucifer grabbed her by the arms and _pulled._ Her knees buckled, and she laughed a little hysterically but fell just as he'd intended her to: into his arms, her face pressed up against his neck, her laughter turning into little hitched sobs of exhaustion and relief. Lucifer felt as if he might burst right out of his human form - if he still had his wings, they would expand until they covered all of Hell.

"I missed you," she was saying, through gasps, "oh, I missed you, I missed you - "

"Chloe," Lucifer said, which was a name he didn't often allow himself to say out loud. "Chloe, my love, what are you _doing_ here?"

"I died," Chloe said, rather nonchalantly, as if that wasn't the stupidest, most tragic thing any human soul had said to him since the beginning of existence. "Are you alright? I came to check on you. I was worried."

"You - " Lucifer stammered for a second, lost for words. "I can't believe - Chloe, you - "

She pulled back, concerned. Lucifer looked at her face hungrily, taking in the differences: her hair was shorter, little wrinkles around her eyes - oh, her beautiful eyes, they'd gone pale grey in death - and her hands, one of them was scarred - how long had it _been_ for her?

Chloe studied him in turn, surely taking in the visible things she could see - not that she could comprehend all of it, but human souls tended to rearrange things in the way that they expected them to be, much like demons did - only subconsciously. "Is that a parrot?"

Lucifer blinked, and turned his head to see his sprite - his parrot - perched on one of the chairs. Next to it sat another human soul, who was cheerfully feeding him chunks of cheese. He turned back. "Yes."

"Um. Okay," Chloe said. She nudged him. "Let's stand up. My knees aren't what they used to be."

Lucifer scoffed, but pulled her to her feet gently, cradling her hands in his own like they were precious things. He always felt just a little unworthy of touching her - even on Earth, when his mostly-human, mortal-adjacent form was much closer to what she was than he could ever hope to be here. Her Divinity was soaked into her skin - he could practically taste it, standing this close. The only light the Lightbringer could never conjure himself. "Chloe," he said gently, "darling - oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"For what?" Chloe asked, a little wrinkle appearing between her eyebrows. Lucifer's chest twisted in pain. "Oh - that. Well, it's fine." She shrugged. "I've had some time to come to terms with it."

"Time?" Lucifer's chest gave that odd twinging again. "How long have you been here?"

Chloe shrugged again. Lucifer thought he might want to die, in that moment. Die for real, and forever.

"I should've - oh, fuck me," he hissed, "I should've known, I should've - should've had someone on the lookout for you, or for - for the others. You're impervious to me even here - that's why I didn't know!"

"Does that mean you're vulnerable again?" Chloe asked - teased, really. She had an odd sort of way of speaking, an absentness, which reminded him of the wanderers, the souls that slipped from their rooms and roamed the lands of Hell, ducking in and out of all the tight spaces and causing mischief, enjoying the snot out of themselves all the while. Had she fallen in with that crowd? It figured.

"Chloe," Lucifer said, gently, still holding her hands as if they might break. "Chloe, I…" he didn't know what to say. A fire - she'd died in a fire. Saving a little boy - of course she did. How long had it been? It'd been barely a century for him - not even enough time to get his feet wet. He'd recently gotten everything running smoothly again, and was just starting to settle into his funk. But for Chloe, it could've been a million years - time was a funny thing. A very funny thing.

"It's alright, Lucifer," she said, reaching up to touch his face. Her fingers against his cheek burned in such a nice way - he hadn't been this close to Divinity in a long, long time. "It's alright. I'm just glad to see you again. Is there somewhere we can go?" Her eyes, sepia-toned, were just as lovely in black and white. Just as piercing, intensely playful. "Somewhere we can talk."

"Yes, of course." He turned to look at the other soul, who gave him a friendly wave. His parrot was perched on her knee, munching a cracker. "A friend of yours, I assume?"

"Sorry - Lucifer this is Shady. Shady, this is Lucifer," Chloe said. "And that's Leonard - oh. Oh, my."

Leonard was dead. Ah yes, the light of Creation was quite deadly for demons. Lucifer had forgotten these trains were often staffed. "Oops," he said, and snapped his fingers again. Leonard groaned, and shot Lucifer a dirty look, his face still a burnt mess. "Well, go clean yourself up, man. You've got the return trip to think about."

Leonard snarled an insult at him, although Lucifer had never bothered to learn Khwarazmian and he wasn't about to now, so it didn't have much effect.

"Sorry, Leonard," Chloe called. The demon stopped talking abruptly, and turned and left the compartment. One of his arms had burnt off, which he'd left behind - but it would grow back soon enough. Lucifer subtly angled Chloe away so she wouldn't see the limb lying on the floor. "Wow. Is that your normal management style or are you still a little out of sorts?"

"I'm sorry Detective, normally I would love to hear your criticisms on my _management style_ but I'm still hung up on how you _died_ and didn't tell me."

"It's not like I died on purpose," Chloe said defensively. "And what was I supposed to do, send you a text?"

"You were supposed to go to _Heaven,_" Lucifer replied, nearly yelling.

"Well, I didn't," Chloe said. She turned to frown over at her friend. "What's wrong with her? Shady, are you alright?"

The other soul shrugged and smiled, gave them another wave, and kept on feeding his parrot. Lucifer blew out an annoyed, impatient breath.

"She's usually a lot more talkative, but she hasn't said a word since you got here," Chloe said, concerned. She leaned over his shoulder slightly. "It's okay," she called, "he's nice! Really!"

The soul just tilted her head, looking confused. Lucifer snorted.

"Mortal souls can't speak in my presence until I give them permission," Lucifer explained.

"Well - give her permission!"

"No! We're still talking!" Lucifer huffed. "Come with me to my chambers - it's more private."

"But what about her?" Chloe asked. "And the others on the train? We heard screaming." She looked faintly disapproving. "Lucifer, she - she hasn't done anything that bad. She killed her husband, but he was hurting her - hurting her terribly. She doesn't deserve to be in Hell - tell me you'll send her away, out of here, somewhere better - "

"She doesn't look all that tormented to me, does she?" Lucifer asked, somewhat offended. "And you do realize you're _standing on_ the train to Purgatory, don't you?"

Chloe blinked. "Oh," she said.

"Dear me, Ash usually explains things a bit better," Lucifer said irritably. "Would you just - let's just go for a walk, shall we? It's very oppressive in here, and you really don't want to know whose head we're standing on at the current moment - "

"They were screaming though," Chloe said faintly, but still stubborn. "In the other cars."

Lucifer eyed her with fond exasperation. The best mortal he'd ever met - far too much compassionate for her own good. Look at her now - holding hands with the Devil. She really was a miracle. "The only souls who scream in Hell, darling," he said gently, "are the ones who deserve it. They torture themselves, Chloe. Why do you think the demons have so much time on their hands?"

Chloe blinked again. "Huh."

"Then there are those," Lucifer continued, stepping in close, "who _want_ to scream. Who ask for it. That's quite a different story."

She gulped. "Okay, let's go for a walk," she said. "Can you leave for a second though, so I can say goodbye to Shady?"

"Her name is _Sadie,_ you do realize," Lucifer said, rolling his eyes. "And she's not going anywhere yet. I have to give each one of these souls forgiveness before they can leave."

"Oh," Chloe said, her mouth quirking upwards. "Forgiveness?"

"Don't start," Lucifer warned.

"It's just that that's so _kind_ of you - "

"Shut. Up," Lucifer said crisply, and tugged her right out of existence in the train, so eager to get her alone that he almost forgot his parrot.

(Well, he was rather out of sorts.)

* * *

Lucifer's "chambers" were more like a separate plane of Hell that was unreachable to anyone but those he allowed in, and the current list was confined to Mazikeen, his parrot (former sprite), and Chloe. It was similar to his throne room in that they reacted to his mood, but he could also make it look like whatever he wanted it to look like. Currently, it looked like Chloe's Earthly living room, which was rather embarrassing and pathetic.

"Er," he said, "sorry, I'll just - "

"Oh my God," Chloe exclaimed, "this is so weird! You know we moved out of here years ago, right?"

"No," Lucifer said, sobering, "I didn't. I wasn't watching you, Chloe. I didn't think I could bear it." He grimaced. "But I should've been. If I had, I would've seen it, I would've been able to stop it - "

"Oh, stop," Chloe said, rolling her eyes. "Remember that talk we have about not blaming yourself for everything? Because I do. It was fairly productive, I thought."

"Fine." Lucifer scowled. "You know they made you a martyr, right?"

"What?!"

He nodded gleefully. "Saint Chloe," he said, dodging the swipe of her hand as she tried to smack him. "Saint Chloe Decker, patron of maple syrup-flavored donuts, retro college softcore porn flicks, and James Franco masturbatory fantasies - "

"You shut the fuck up," Chloe said, her Divine cheeks burning. "All I did was run into a fire. Jeez."

"Chloe," Lucifer said, shaking his head, "you have to know by now how special you are. What kind of life you've led, what you've done to me - and to Maze, and even Amenadiel. No regular mortal could've done it." He took a step closer. "I am sorry. You deserved a long life, my love. Your daughter deserved to have you for most of hers, too."

"She's okay," Chloe said softly, "she's a senator, you know."

Lucifer chuckled. "A UN representative too," he said, "later on down the line, of course. There's some fuss about a scandal with one of her assistants - details are a bit muddled on that one, I'm guessing it could happen but maybe it won't, still a toss up - but either way she'll come out swinging, get herself a nice cushy diplomatic posting in her forties - but her _fifties,_ whew, that's when our Trixie _really_ gets going - "

Chloe kissed him to shut him up, which worked rather efficiently. Lucifer dropped her hands and yanked her closer by her waist, opening his mouth to the press of her tongue. She still burned to the touch, but it didn't hurt - it was like talking to his Father, he realized. Back in the old days, when He still did that - looking straight into the sun, for so long that your eyes hurt. Her skin was hot, but only to his touch - warm with the grace of Heaven. The touch of everything that he'd lost.

He'd thought, back when he first discovered what she was, that he couldn't do it. That it ruined all that he felt for her, that he'd never be able to touch her without being bitterly reminded. But here, in the moment, Lucifer found himself on the verge of tears. He'd _missed it._ He'd missed the light more than he even _knew._

"Chloe," he said, drunk on the shape of her name after so many years not saying it. "Chloe."

"You said 'our,'" Chloe whispered back, a little tearful, but a smile on her face. Their mouths were still close enough together that he could feel the breath that wasn't really there, the brush of lips that existed only because she expected herself to have them. He probably couldn't change his chambers now, he realized. Not while Chloe was here. They were stuck with whatever she first saw, and cemented in her mind as the truth. "Is there a bedroom?"

"If you like," Lucifer said, his hands trembling against her back.

"Should we go into it?"

"If you like," he said again. He groaned out loud when she pressed her lips to his neck, the hot corner between his jaw and ear. "Chloe."

"I love you too," she whispered. "Do you remember me saying it? I'll say it again. As many times as you want."

Lucifer pulled her close, buried his face in her hair. He couldn't speak, couldn't even breathe.

"I think I'm here because I wanted to be here," Chloe whispered. She opened her eyes, and they flashed blue again for just a moment, before the grey seeped back in. "I remember...I don't really remember dying, but I remember _something._ I think there was a choice. I was standing somewhere...and there were two ways to go. And I chose the one that would lead to you." She smiled. "And it worked."

"I've never met anyone like you," Lucifer said, meaning it like he'd never meant anything he'd ever said before.

Chloe kissed him again. "I sure hope not," she whispered.

* * *

Lucifer remembered Eve, and he remembered the Garden. They'd tried to take that from him, but he'd hung onto it, clutching the memory to his chest so tightly it burned. Eve, who had a laugh like the sunlight, who liked to dance in her bare feet, who never deserved what they tried to pin on her, not really. Her only sin was curiosity - excitement. She'd _wanted_ to see outside the Walls. She'd _asked him for it._

Why create a whole world, a whole race of creatures with the capacity for love and passion and anger and hate, and then blame them for their own natures? Lucifer never understood it. Angels weren't meant to love like that - angels _Fell_ for loving like that. But humans - they were made from the clay of the Earth, and given breath by the Divine Fire. They opened their eyes, they sat up, and they loved - it was the first thing they learned how to do, before they even realized they were conscious at all. Lucifer remembers the wonder on Eve's face, the soft awe on Adam's - looking around at the trees and the flowers and the sky, asking each other, _are you here? Are you mine? Is this ours? Is this forever?_

Oh, how he'd hated them. Coveted them, envied them their freedom. He'd be lying if that wasn't part of it - why he'd offered Eve the choice. Because he knew she would take it - it was in her nature to. It was in Adam's too - if Lucifer had been a bit farther right on the Kinsey scale, then Original Sin might have been man's burden and not woman's.

Maybe it'd all been part of some _plan_ \- for Lucifer to Fall, for Lucifer to covet and stew and envy, to slide up onto Eve's shoulder and whisper in her ear. Amenadiel had mentioned, once - in the dead of night, as they sat together at the bar, hours after they'd discovered that the first nephilim in centuries had been conceived - that perhaps that had been their Father's gift. _I wasn't made like you were, Brother,_ he confessed, his Graceful shoulders slumped, holding his self-righteous, Divine head in both hands. _I don't know how to love like you do. That's why He let you go, don't you know? He knew that's what you wanted. Couldn't you see it? You always were His favorite son._

Lucifer had punched him in the face, and didn't talk to him for weeks. But now, with Chloe's burning hands on his skin, he thinks: _okay, fine. Fine. Maybe you had a little bit of a point. He didn't have to be such a_ dick_ about it though._

"Tell me how it works," Chloe asked, a demand dressed up like pillow talk. Lucifer pressed his cheek against her bare shoulder, staring up at the ceiling that looked both exactly and nothing like how they both remembered it. "I want to know everything. What do you even do all day?"

"Sulk, mostly," Lucifer said idly. "Stew and brood, self-flagellate. At least lately." She pinched his side, and he yelped. "Oi!"

"Big Devil on Campus," she teased. "I don't believe you."

"Well, it's true, darling," he said. "Hell is a self-sufficient operation. I don't build things that don't work, after all." He smiled at her. "They were right, though, when they said it all went to shit when I left. That's the irony, I'm afraid - it can't run properly without me, but when I'm here there's not a whole lot for me to do." He inched closer, kissing the love bite on her neck, which he knew only existed because she wanted it to. Sexual deviance, indeed. "It's terribly boring."

"Is that why you left with Maze? Abandoned it?"

"Yes."

Chloe looked thoughtful, playing absentmindedly with his hand, splayed across her bare abdomen. Lucifer watched her fingers glide down the back of his knuckles in little curlicue patterns, entranced. "I only met the souls that brought themselves here, didn't I?"

"I imagine so. The ones who were sent here - the truly bad ones - they get, ah. Special attention."

"Hm," Chloe said.

An anxious feeling arose in Lucifer's chest. "I don't do it personally, you know," he said. "Not anymore, anyway. The big names - the Ted Bundys and Christopher Columbuses and the like - they're on a rather rigid schedule; I don't tend to intervene. I focus on the ones who might slip through the cracks, otherwise. The souls that are slippery enough to get away from the more dim-witted demons."

"I'm fine, Lucifer," Chloe said, smiling warmly. "You don't have to worry."

"Who's worrying?"

"You are," Chloe said calmly. She smiled fondly, still looking up at the ceiling. "I'm just thinking."

"More suggestions on my management style?" Lucifer snagged one of her hands on its pass, brought it to his lips for a kiss. "I would welcome feedback in other areas, if you should see fit. Maybe we could apply your suggestions in a more physical fashion - "

Chloe craned her neck and kissed him again, which engaged his mouth rather thoroughly. One of her Divine legs slipped over his hip, and Lucifer's breath stuttered in his chest. Never in his extradimensional life had he had sex like this. (He _knew_ it would be amazing, though admittedly he'd been picturing the setting somewhat differently.)

"That's a pretty handy way to make you shut up," Chloe said, when she pulled away. She'd slipped halfway into his lap, still on her side but curled around him so much that her hips were almost completely off the bed. "I thought about doing that a lot, you know. When we were alive."

_We._ Lucifer touched her face. "Chloe. I - "

She turned her head, and kissed his palm. "Hm?"

"My love," he started, unsure of how to say it, "this isn't…"

She waited, with her grey, impossible eyes, for him to finish. When it became clear he couldn't, she simply smiled again. "Okay," she said softly, pushing gently with her thigh until he was flat on his back, prone and quite climbable. "Let's talk about that later. Shall we?"

Lucifer let his eyes fall closed, sliding his hands up her flank, stopping one palm on her ribcage. _The third rib of man,_ he thought, pressing lightly on the bumpy ridge beneath her skin. She shivered a little, and leaned down for another kiss, her hair a soft curtain against the side of his face. _A jealous, resentful creature,_ Amenadiel had once called him. _Pathetic, infected with desire,_ Michael had said, moments before the Fall.

If _this_ was wanting, if this was sin - the words truly didn't have any meaning. Chloe flipped her hair back and sat up straight, pulling his hands up to her breasts, her face hungry and fond. Like a man possessed - like a _man_ at all - Lucifer let himself be directed. He kissed her where she told him to, touched what she wanted him to touch. This couldn't be wrong, he thought, looking in awe up at her beautiful, precious face. _If a creature like this could love me, then anything at all is possible._

He did not think about anything else. He was the King of Hell - he didn't have to think about anything that he didn't want to.

At least not until morning.

* * *

Chloe started to change things. It was small at first, though of course he noticed. The kitchen was a little bigger the next day, and there was a frying pan and bacon, all of a sudden. Lucifer took the hint and made her some incorporeal breakfast.

"Mm," Chloe said, munching on scrambled eggs and toast with the butter all melty and perfect, just how she liked it. Lucifer knew very well by now her preferences. "I had this daydream too. Breakfast in bed." She grinned and leaned in for a salty kiss.

"Every day, for as long as you want it," Lucifer promised. He hoped the desperate hope wasn't _too_ obvious in his voice. "For you - I'll even _bake._"

"Softie," Chloe accused, with her mouth full.

The day after that - or it could've been two days, it was getting hard to keep track - they went to forgive some souls. She and her friend Shady Sadie took up prime seats in his throne room - cross legged on some kind of futon, while Lucifer dutifully met with each soul, listening to their tales of woe before sending them on their way up to Redemption. They also had boba tea, for some reason.

"Don't I get one?" he complained. There hadn't been any sort of futon in his throne room, ever, let alone Taiwanese novelty drinks. It made him somewhat uncomfortable - the same way seeing his former sprite settling into himself nicely as an affectionate parrot did, still glued to Shady Sadie's side, begging for crackers - but Lucifer didn't hate it. It felt sort of nice, actually, to be discomfited in this way. "I'm dreadfully parched. All this forgiving, you know."

"You're the King around here, make yourself one," Chloe said. She frowned down at her drink. "I thought you made these for us, actually."

"No, darling, I didn't," Lucifer said fondly. He watched her little moue of confusion, and decided to let her come to the conclusion on her own. "Feel up for moving on yet, Miss Shady? I've only a few dozen left from your train ride, you know."

"This is awfully good though, can't I wait until I finish?" Shady Sadie said. They'd been drinking their teas for hours, and yet both their cups were still half full, frosty and perfectly cold.

"I suppose."

"Miss Chloe was right, you _are_ really nice," Shady Sadie said. "Not at all like how my pastor described you."

"Ah, well, pastors are often somewhat misguided, especially in your neck of the woods," Lucifer said. "It's all that repression. Terribly bad for the moral compass."

Andhaka very conspicuously did not blink an eye at their new visitors, although he did seem somewhat relieved that Lucifer was in a better mood. He also brought up George Byron again, which made Chloe sit up straight, her eyes flashing blue again.

"Oh my God, you dated Lord Byron?!"

"'Dated' is a strong word," Lucifer said, wincing at the way Andhaka shrieked in pain at the sound of the G-word. "Do watch your tongue, dear, they're rather sensitive to certain Beings' names being spoken aloud - "

"Oh, sorry," Chloe said, patting Andhaka on one of his shoulders. "He warned me about that but I forgot. Are you okay?"

"Yes, my lady," Andhaka said, shifting away from her hand before it could make contact, eyeing it with terror. "I am...resilient. I guess. All hail the Lord of Darkness." Two of his faces were still eyeing Lucifer nervously, while the others were doing the same to Chloe. "And, um, Lady? Of...Darkness? Sorry sire, I'm not sure what her title is yet - "

"Title?" Chloe asked, tilting her head.

"Ah, why don't you take Miss Shady up to the Frozen Wheel of Betrayal, Disgusting One?" Lucifer said quickly. "You'll like Georgie. He's quite a lot of fun when he's not in love."

Chloe waited until they were gone to frown at him. "You call him 'Disgusting One'?"

"That's _his_ title," Lucifer said. "Don't look at me like that! He picked it out himself."

Chloe considered this. "On second thought," she said, "it kind of suits him."

"I've always thought so," Lucifer agreed.

* * *

She wanted to see everything. Endlessly curious, Chloe asked questions faster than Lucifer could answer them: what is this, how does this work, how did you make it? Lucifer felt breathless and blessed, a tremulous happiness that he knew could shatter him if given the chance, but he couldn't help but oblige her. He always did make things harder on himself.

He took her to the Pits, where the worst sinners of all were kept in chains - the ones who felt no remorse, but who were too corrupt, too evil to smear the streets of Heaven. Chloe looked down at their terrible faces, encased in eternal ice, a stony look in her grey eyes, and said, "good," and Lucifer loved her even more.

On the tops of mountains, and deep in the valleys of despair, Lucifer showed Chloe the realm he'd built eons ago: the winding corridors, the vast plains of empty fields, the skies that churned in storms that never ended. Everywhere she went, she trailed little strings of Divinity, and souls followed her without even meaning to: betrayers and liars, killers and suicides alike, they all crowded close to her whenever they could, desperate for a piece of her warmth. Lucifer sympathized; he knew the feeling.

She was endlessly compassionate, of course. She would talk to them, ask them questions. Once, a little girl followed them for hours through one of the forests, hiding behind trees whenever they looked in her direction. Lucifer could read the corruption in her soul: she'd been born into deep poverty, taught to steal and lie from birth. She died of dysentery when she was seven, but not before she'd smothered her little brother with a pillow because she was angry he was getting more attention from her parents. She'd been in Hell for thousands and thousands of years, and Chloe waited patiently, lagging behind him as they walked, until the child felt brave enough to show her face.

"Hi there," Chloe said, kneeling down into the leaves on the damp ground. Lucifer hung back, watching with a mixture of pride and existential horror, as Chloe made the young soul laugh. He could see the corruption in her heart easing with every word, until both souls were shining. When the little girl finally walked away, she started skipping off into the trees, a touch of Chloe's light buried deep in incorporeal heart.

Chloe smiled at him as she turned back, as if she'd done nothing amazing at all. Lucifer tried to smile back, but he could tell it came off forced; Chloe's own smile dipped in response. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Lucifer said. He looked out into the distance, in the direction the little soul had gone. "You do realize what you just did for her. Right?"

Chloe shrugged. She did that a lot, now. "Made her laugh?"

"Darling, you just cleansed her heart. Made her a candidate for Purgatory."

"Really?" She looked vaguely pleased about this. "What is Purgatory, anyway? If you're going to send Shady Sadie there, I'd like to know."

"It's - " Lucifer took her hand, tugging her back onto the path. All around them were more human souls, hiding from them in the trees. It was only a matter of time before another one approached, especially if they stayed here on the ground. "I don't know what it looks like. Probably different for everyone. But when souls go there, it means they're on their way to forgiving themselves. Some of them make it to Heaven - some don't. Oftentimes they'll end up back here eventually, but..." Lucifer squeezed her hand. "That's rare."

Chloe looked thoughtful. "So Shady Sadie will have a chance to go to Heaven?"

"She probably will, yes. I can always tell the ones that have a good shot." He squeezed her hand again. "I know she's your friend, Detective, but - "

"No! No, I want her to go," Chloe said quickly. "I'll be sad when she's gone, of course, but I guess I've just been putting it off because..." she trailed off, and looked over her shoulder, back into the endless trees. "That little girl - will she go too?"

"Eventually."

"But you have to forgive her first, right?"

"Yes," Lucifer said. "They all end up in my throne room eventually, once they're ready. They can leave on their own, but none of them ever have. They set the rules, you know. It's not that Heaven wouldn't let them in without my forgiveness, but they _think_ that's what they need to get there, and so that's the way it is." They came to a gentle stop, at a crossroads in the path that did not exist before. Little things like that tended to happen around Chloe - roads that had been the same for centuries started to change, walls changed colors, skies cleared. It was rather terrifying, if Lucifer was being honest. Not because he didn't know what it meant, but because he _did._

"Have you ever...not forgiven someone?"

"Oh, plenty of times," Lucifer said. "The arrogant ones will ask. The ones who don't feel actual remorse. Regret and remorse are two different things, you know. Then of course there are the ones that don't deserve Heaven _ever - _it doesn't matter how many times they ask."

Chloe nodded, her brow furrowed like she was working something out in her head. "And how do they find you? They make their way onto the train somehow, or...?"

Lucifer shrugged. "They're all wandering," he said. "That's how they get out of their loops - they come to a certain peace with what they're seeing, and they leave. Then they make their way to me." He grinned. "Like you did."

"But it takes thousands of years for some of them to make it. Millions."

"Sometimes, yes." Lucifer touched her chin, worried. "Chloe - does it bother you? Tell the truth."

"Not exactly," she confessed. "I guess I just...it's so lonely down here. For them and for you. I'd never really thought about this place as lonely, but that's the worst part, isn't it?"

Lucifer found that he couldn't reply, his throat frozen. He simply nodded.

"Do you..." Chloe cleared her throat. "Could I help you forgive Sadie? When you send her on her way?"

"Of course."

"Okay." She took a deep breath, and pulled his hand a little, tugging him along down the right fork of the path.

Lucifer followed; as if he had any other choice.

* * *

Ashmedai welcomed him in with a bottle of single-malt scotch, which was quite nice of her. She was the most sympathetic ear he had down here, and always had been. Even Maze was a little terse when it came to emotional support.

"Interesting times, interesting times, brother," she said, pouring him another belt. Lucifer knocked it back, wishing he were on Earth again so he could really taste it the way it was meant to be tasted; everything in Ashmedai's little circle tasted a little too sugary for his taste. "She's settling in nicely, I assume?"

"Did you sense her?" he asked hoarsely. "When she first died. It can't be a coincidence she ended up here, close to you."

"No, I didn't, although I am rather glad she found her way to me," Ash said. She was in the form that she preferred to take on Earth, whenever she made it up: a plump, middle-aged woman with jade green eyes and thick black hair. She still had a rather medieval understanding on what humans found physically attractive, bless her heart. "The rumors were right, brother. She really is something special."

Lucifer covered his face with both hands. "She doesn't belong here."

"She chose it, didn't she?" Ash tutted sympathetically. "There are no locked doors in Hell. She could leave if she wanted."

"Yes, but she loves me," Lucifer said mournfully. "She loves me and it's turned her into...something else. She's not...she's not normal. Not like the other souls." He knocked back another half-glass of scotch. "She can Forgive them, Ash."

They'd sent Shady Sadie on her way, the other day. Chloe had hugged her friend for a very long time, whispering into the woman's ear. Lucifer hadn't tried to listen in; in fact, he hadn't actually done _anything._ He'd just watched in mute amazement as Chloe laid her hands on Sadie D'Amico's forehead, and _Forgave_ her. The soul had faded away, sent straight to Heaven, Lucifer knew - skipping Purgatory altogether. Afterwards, Chloe hadn't seemed to notice that she'd done anything at all - seemed to be under the impression that _he'd_ sent her away, in fact. He still didn't know how to tell her.

"Well," Ash said, shrugging. Her office looked very similar to Dr. Linda's, which Lucifer would be offended by if he weren't so grateful. "She _is_ a martyr. And a miracle. That's a two-for-one special right there, brother."

"You make her sound like an Applebee's appetizer special," Lucifer complained.

"I don't know what that is," Ash reminded him, rather gently.

"Oh. Right."

"You know," she said, patting his arm, "we used to hope that you would meet somebody. When you created Maze, we hoped that would the just the thing, but of course she turned out to be so disgusted by genuine emotion. I was so disappointed."

"You know, I'm fairly certain she's shacked up with my ex-girlfriend," Lucifer said thoughtfully. "Impressive growth, don't you think?"

"Good for her," Ash replied. She gave him a playful grin. She was one of the few of the siblings that had Fallen with him that had kept most of her personality from before - a little fussy, her heart bleeding a little too much. She made a fine angel of Hell, but she wasn't nearly stern enough to rule it, unfortunately. Lucifer had a rather large soft spot for her anyway. "Does it have to be such a bad thing? I have my little souls down here - they keep me company. But who keeps you company, Lucifer? Eternity is a long time, my Lord."

"Only if she wants it," Lucifer said, swallowing hard.

"Only one way to find that out."

"Yes, yes, of course," Lucifer replied, nodding, "or, alternate option, I could spend a few decades with the soul who makes me happier than I've ever been before, so I have some nice memories to wallow in once she figures out what's happening and leaves me for the Silver City."

Ash sipped her own whiskey delicately. "Sounds like something a Devil would do," she said.

Lucifer sighed, slumping hard against the back of her terrible couch. "This is terribly hard, the emotional maturity thing," he complained. "No wonder Maze never wanted to try it."

"I know, they're so brave, these humans," Ash marveled, shaking her curly head. "No wonder Father liked them better than us."

"Ouch," Lucifer said. "Too soon, sister."

* * *

"Look," Chloe said. She'd greeted him excitedly in his throne room - how had she gotten in there without him? He'd left her by the Lake of Endless Exhaustion - with a roughly-drawn sketch on a whiteboard. "I have an idea to run past you."

"You know I love your ideas," Lucifer said, kissing her neck. She laughed, swatting him away. "Oh, business, is it?"

"I'm making a map," Chloe said excitedly. "I was thinking, and - I know you said it's the way of things, but it still seems so _inefficient,_ for the souls that deserve Purgatory to just find their own way to you, so I thought - well, if we could find enough demons, and keep them in line - we could do patrols." She bounced a little on her heels, extremely cutely, as she explained. "Like we did up there, remember? Each cop would have their own beat, and they'd rotate in and out based on high-traffic or crime areas, reporting to a desk sergeant. Well, why can't we do the same here?" She grinned. "Look, I've drawn this just from memory mostly, and from the spots you've taken me to in the last few weeks, but I figured you could help me finish it. And we'll need to start thinking about which demons you trust enough to bring the souls in - some of them are pretty fragile, emotionally speaking - "

"Chloe," Lucifer interrupted, unable to bear another word, "it's a wonderful idea, it's just - "

"What?"

"Hell _moves,_ darling," Lucifer said gently. He took her hand, lowering it from the whiteboard. "That's why Ash sends trains. It moves constantly. A map won't work - everything's always moving around, rotating, swapping places. It's hard even for me to keep track."

"Oh." Chloe bit her lip. "I didn't notice."

"It does seem to be a bit more stable than usual around you," Lucifer admitted, "but - "

"Well, wait, that doesn't make sense though," she interrupted, "how do I find my way around then? Nothing's changed that I've seen. I go back and forth between my apartment and here all the time - "

"_Your_ apartment?" Lucifer said archly.

" - and the Lake, of course, and that big frozen bit that all your poet ex-boyfriends like so much," Chloe continued. "Maybe it's just stable, period, now. When was the last time you checked?"

"It's not Hell that's different, Detective," Lucifer said heavily, gathering every ounce of courage he had. "It's you."

"Me?"

"You have to have noticed," he pleaded, "the way it reacts to you - Chloe, look around, does this look like the throne room of Satan to you?"

Chloe blinked, and looked. There was a desk and chair eerily similar to the set up she'd had at the police precinct in life, and there was a stereo in the corner which always playing the greatest soft rock hits of the seventies. Much more light than Lucifer preferred, although he'd never complain for her sake - and a great big rug on the ground. Come to think of it - there was actually a ground, now. Lucifer and his demons had always gotten by without one before.

"Oh," she said again.

He took a deep breath. "Chloe," he said. "I can't make you alive again. I wish I could. I would do it if it were within my power."

"Lucifer," Chloe said.

"There's only one Being who can, and He and I aren't on speaking terms," Lucifer finished. He reached out a shaky hand, asking without asking, and she slipped her palm into his, her face frightfully blank. "I would send you to the Silver City though, if that's what you wanted. Say the word, and I will. But Chloe, if you stay here...I built this place. It's part of me." He took her palm and pressed it to her chest. "It will love you as I do. Look at you already - learning how it works. I know you can feel it, even if you haven't paid much attention."

Chloe looked up at the walls, which were slowly bleeding away into different colors - swirls of blue and purple, like a child's drawing against the red and black. "This is...me?" she asked. "I'm doing this?"

"It's always been you," Lucifer said softly. Her face broke open a little; she was so _different_ down here than she'd been when she was alive, but not in such a way that Lucifer didn't recognize her, or love her still. It was just that you lost all that defensiveness in death. As a soul, Chloe was so much more open - every emotion was right there for him to see on her face. When she spoke, she always spoke truthfully. He missed the prickly parts, sometimes, but every moment was such a _revelation_: to be so close to the essence of who she was, without any of the baggage that Earth forced her to carry.

She would gain some of that back, if she stayed. It always took a while to get used to the rawness of being dead: but she could do it. He knew she could. If she _wanted it._

"I don't," Chloe said, and then stopped. She kept her hand in Lucifer's, but pressed the other one to her lips. She seemed to be almost holding back laughter, although when she pulled her hand away, her eyes were wet with tears. "I don't think I want to be alive again," she finally said. "I had my shot. I think I'm done."

Lucifer didn't know what to say to that.

"But if I leave you," Chloe said.

Lucifer closed his eyes.

"I couldn't come back. That'd be it. Right?"

"Yes," he said. He could barely speak the word. The most hated word in existence was 'yes'. Terrible things had happened to him, every time he said 'yes.'

"Then, fine. I won't do it. I like it here, anyway." He heard her take a loud breath, and then her hands were on his face. "Lucifer, look at me."

"Give me another moment, won't you?" he replied, and grabbed her wrists. He felt shaky and strange, like the times he'd been shot or stabbed or what have you in her presence on Earth. The weird sickness of mortality. "Just - give me a moment. And a kiss, please."

Chloe obliged. Her mouth was warm against his, warm and wet and alive. Lucifer wanted to die again, but in a good way, somehow. Sometimes he wanted to bury himself inside of her and just _die._ It was the only way he could think of to describe the feeling, really.

"I love you," she said, when she pulled away. "Open your eyes. Please?"

He obeyed. Her face was shiny and wet and a little scared, but the fear flew away as soon as he met her eyes, and she smiled. "And I love you," he said.

"I know." Her smile trembled a little, but it didn't fall. "We could go back to Earth if we wanted anyway. Right? Like you and Maze did. Could I do that too, or do you need to be a demon?"

"I could make you a body," Lucifer said slowly, "but - "

"The demons. Right." She seemed to have some of that earlier excitement back, and she bounced again, jostling herself gently against his chest. "Lucifer. What if."

"What?" he asked, breathless.

"You said time is weird here, that you've only been here a century since you left LA." She paused. "I've been here longer."

"I know, darling," Lucifer said gently.

"If we went back, then - when would it happen? Would we pop out a few weeks after _you_ left, or after _I_ did?"

"Chloe, I truly...I truly don't know," Lucifer confessed. "I don't control it. That's not how it works. I don't even know how to explain how it works." He summoned his throne, and tugged her down into his lap, and she instantly curled her feet around his knee, her arms moving naturally around his neck. He pressed his forehead against the side of her face, overwhelmed by her presence, as usual. "My best guess is that it would be after you died. The natural laws on Earth are quite rigid, like that."

"But," Chloe said, "if we went, and then we came back...maybe time would stand still _down here._"

Lucifer blinked. "Um."

"What's a lifetime on Earth, to the eternity down here?" Chloe asked, pulling back to cup his face in her palms. "We could pop up, live a little, then come back down and keep everything in order - "

"Chloe," Lucifer said, laughing a little and hearing it come out somewhat hysterically, "it, ah, usually works the _other way around,_ darling - "

"Hm, I don't think so," Chloe said, still frowning. She looked over at the walls, which seemed to be melting into some sort of colored monstrosity, at some secret bidding only she knew. "It was only four years, Lucifer, since you left. Trixie just started high school." She smiled a little, her voice growing distant, and her skin seeming to almost...glow. "Charlie's walking already, talking. Linda's looking into preschools. Maze and Eve just bought a house in Malibu. Ella met someone. Dan's happier too, eventually. They're okay without us, they go on to have the lives they were all meant to have, but...they don't have to go without. There's an option where we have it all. I think I can do it, Lucifer."

Lucifer's mouth opened, and then closed again, and nothing came out. It couldn't be that easy. It just couldn't.

"It isn't, though," Chloe said. "It's not that easy." She didn't seem to notice that she'd just read his mind. "Because I died. I really did do that. That's permanent. But - " she shrugged. "Maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe it's just another way of looking at things." She smiled. "What did you say I was, again?"

"A miracle," Lucifer said. He hugged her close again, tears in his eyes. He'd never cried in Hell before. A first time for everything, it seemed. "You're a fucking miracle, Detective."

"Hm," Chloe said, kissing his forehead. "You know, I think you are too."

* * *

.

* * *

"So," Chloe said.

"Indeed," Amenadiel replied.

They were sitting in what could best be described as the receiving room of Hell. Not quite Down but not quite Up, and not Sideways or Halfway, either.

"Are you sure about this, Chloe Decker?" Amenadiel said, with the Divine weight of Heaven behind his voice. Chloe had always been a bit intimidated by him in life - he was a very imposing man, after all, even when she hadn't known he was an angel - but with her new way of looking at things - nothing was a mystery, anymore. It was kind of cool, actually. "You still have time to take your place in the Silver City. You are not so entangled in the matters of my brother yet - but if you continue with this path, you will be."

"Dude, really?" Chloe replied. She swiveled a little in her spinny chair - Lucifer had given her one that folded up into a little suitcase, so she could take it with her to meetings. She loved it. "The other day, one of the vengeance demons in the third circle tried to give me a crown."

Amenadiel frowned.

"It was kind of sweet. If it hadn't been made from bones, anyway." Chloe shrugged. "How's Charlie?"

Amenadiel smiled. "Wonderful," he said. "Yesterday he tried to chase a pigeon in the park. Linda took a video; I can show it to you when you're up top again."

"Aw," Chloe said, grinning.

"But seriously," Amenadiel said, "if I could get a definite confirmation, it would make us all feel better upstairs. You realize that there's never been a Queen of Hell, and that you've been making a _lot_ of the seraphim _very nervous - _"

"I'm sure," Chloe said. She crossed her arms. "I like it here. I can help people, Amenadiel. Lucifer shelters them - but I can redeem them. I know I can."

His grand face softened.

"I know a little about what Heaven's like now, anyway," Chloe said with a shrug. "I don't think I'd like it. Too much yoga."

"You would see your father again if you went to Heaven," Amenadiel said. Chloe had known that was coming, but it still stung. "Souls cannot travel in-between on their own. By choosing Lucifer, Chloe - that means you will likely be parted from your loved ones forever, once they pass. Your daughter, too. Linda. Ella."

"Don't think I didn't notice you skipped Dan," Chloe teased. She took a deep breath. "It's no different from the reality I had before, Amenadiel. Death is permanent for us mortals - most of the time. And Lucifer...he needs me more than they do." As Chloe said it, she believed it: she thought of Trixie as an old woman, surrounded by her grandchildren, laughing at her own jokes even as she died. Dan, gunned down in the line of duty, brave and stubborn to the end. Linda, passing in her sleep as a grown Charlie tucked his wings around her shoulders, easing her way. Chloe could see it as plainly as she saw Amenadiel now: it would be sad, and terrible, but that was the way of things.

Time was a funny thing, anyway. Just because someone was gone didn't mean they were _gone._ Hell had taught her that, if nothing else.

"Well that much is true." Amenadiel reached out one of his wings, extending it to her gracefully. Chloe reached out and touched it - smiling gently, in wonder and surprise. A single feather fell from his wingspan, and fluttered down into her hand. It glowed gently in her palm - light blue, almost. The color of the sky. "If you should ever need it," he said. "There's more where that came from too, sister. All you ever need to do is ask."

"Thank you," Chloe said, tears in her eyes. _Sister._ She liked the sound of it. "Will I see you up top, then?"

"Of course," Amenadiel said, inclining his head. "Linda and I would love to have you over for dinner."

"Barbecue?" Chloe said hopefully. "God, I've missed barbecue."

"You really have to break yourself of that habit," Amenadiel said, wincing as her demon guards - two rather stern demons that Lucifer had promised her would stay out of her way - screamed in pain.

"I know, I know, I'm _trying_," Chloe said.

* * *

It was, roughly, the five hundred octodecillionth day of Earth's existence - its anniversary, as it happened - that Lucifer and Chloe popped back up on her favorite beach, blinking their not-quite-mortal eyes up at the same sun that he had once hung in the sky himself. She knew he'd done it, because she could see it, somehow. Whenever she looked up at the night sky, she could see him - the things he'd created. It was her favorite thing about stargazing, now.

"And on the sixth day, He created man," Lucifer said triumphantly, stretching his arms out wide, cricking his neck back and forth. "My, it's good to be back."

Chloe grinned, stretching out her own body, feeling its weird corners and ill-fitting edges. It was strange to be corporeal again. "Feels weird. Kinda stretchy."

"You'll get used to it," Lucifer assured her. They were dressed somewhat weirdly - clothes tended to go a little sideways when traveling between planes, and the sundress Chloe had picked had morphed into a pair of overalls, for some reason, with a Metallica t-shirt underneath. Lucifer himself was in a pinstripe suit - of course it was a suit - but his jacket was made of denim, and he discarded it quickly with a disgusted shudder. They were standing in the ocean, at the edge of the surf, and the water rushed up around Chloe's ankles - piercingly real, and colder than the coldest waiting room in Hell - real things always were much more affecting, Lucifer had told her. "Whew. Suppose your car's still there?"

"My car's in San Francisco," Chloe reminded him. "At an active crime scene. Where my dead body is, remember?"

"Oh," Lucifer said. "Right. We'll have to deal with that first, I guess."

"Trixie," Chloe said, suddenly seizing upon the idea. The love rushed into her chest, so close to her baby now that it brought tears to her eyes. She hadn't realized downstairs how much she'd missed her. "Let's go see Trixie."

"Yes, of course," Lucifer said. He took her hand, and started the soggy trek up the beach. It was late morning, and the tourists were out - gaping at them with shocked eyes, the two oddly dressed strangers who had walked right up out of the ocean like they were strolling down a sidewalk. "We'll still need a car, though."

"We're not stealing one," Chloe said, to cut him off at the pass.

"Oh, please - would you rather take the _bus?_"

"We'll walk, and then hail a cab," Chloe said firmly. "I'm sure there's some cash at my place to pay the driver."

"Oh, darling," Lucifer said fondly, stepping carefully around a pair of weirded out kids, who'd frozen in their path like a couple of terrified deer. "You're very cute. _Pay the driver._ How charming."

"Lucifer," Chloe said sternly. "We're human now. Sort of. Remember?"

"Yes," he said, and pulled her close with one arm, leaning down to kiss her neck sloppily as they walked. They stumbled in the sand, jostling each other back and forth a little, and Chloe laughed - tilting her head back to the sky, her heart and soul so full of joy it felt impossible. She'd seen so much, knew so much more than she had when she last walked on this ground. But it didn't scare her. Not anymore.

"This is going to be so much _fun,_" Lucifer said, releasing her with one last bite of his teeth. Chloe grinned at the side of his face, and decided to keep him close - one arm around his waist, tucked together like teenagers on the boardwalk.

"You're right," she said, breathless with anticipation. "I can't wait."


End file.
